Gray youth

ifferent, she had begun to have a poor opinion of men. And as this opinion was based, not on her reading of Association books, nor on anythin

dulent contract; the other, definitely fraudulently, had absconded with the funds that had provided Amory Towers with an income of a pound a week, and was not very likely ever to be heard of again. We all speak of the world a

g aside until she should have come to some really b

been able to devise was a system in which it was possible for trustees to abscond with funds entrusted to them by godmothers. And not only that. Forgetting that a real man, Blake (unhappily now dead), had said that the sight of a robin in a cage set all heaven in a rage-totally ignoring that spiritual aspect of t

, but they did not. They spoke of such things as everyday matters of business. They said that no humanly devisable system could be perfect, and told her, with their hypocritical "niceness," that the whole fabric of society could hardly be pulled down merely because a self-seeking individual here and there crept in and took advantage. But Amory knew that it was not a question of individuals. It was the underlying spi

ole evil came to a head. How (to put the thing in a nutshell) did men (with the honourable e

wn subjects and carried one or two of Amory's own tricks of handling to simply screaming absurdities! More than once Amory had wondered whether Miss Harris let Mr. Dix kiss her.... And when Amory had pointed out the theft to Mr. Dix, and had said that in her poor opinion an action for infringement of copyright might lie (or if it mightn't, then it ought to), had Mr. Dix done anything but ogle her and insult her with his sticky smile? Not he. He had merely asked her whether she wished to make her demonstration before a jury of matrons!... No doubt he had thought that smart, but even a fool may sometimes tell the truth by accident and unawares. A jury of matrons-that was to say an appeal to a

ons, Amory's own strong art? Oh no; this rough guesswork really would not do for a generation that at last, in spite of bandages and blinkers, had begun to see the light! Amory knew-by herself and Cosimo, to go no further-that the sexes did intermerge and graduate. The best women to-day had brains that pierced ruthlessly through shams (which was what brains were primarily for); and the best men were Feminist in their sympathies. No doubt it would take a little time for this truth to force its way into

indberg? "Mad as hatters," it said, merely because they had shot

as the best the men could do,

simo was back, so that they migh

s uncle's estate detained him; he was in Shropshire: and a phrase about "running up to town presently" had read as if, even when he should come, he would go back to Shropshire again. But he had not given up his studio near the Vestry Hall; Amory knew that because he ha

k execrable. And yet she could not summon the courage to take a knife and scrape it out. Each afternoon she hoped it would appear better in the morning, but it never did. It seemed as if Croziers' carrier, in fetching away those twenty-eight pictures, had taken away also whatever talent had gone to their painting. O

She told herself that she had acquired knowledge more quickly than she had been able to assimilate it. Next, the lean years were always followed by the fat, the fat by the lean: it was a Law.... But she had gleams of hope too. Broadly considered, discontent was no bad sign. Only fatuity could regard its work with unvarying complacence. Despondency might not be in itself a guarantee of genius, but genius and despondency were no strangers. He

but to sacrifice, to the vast and thunderous things he canno

ws they closed, within what walls, behind what doors and windows, with what other eyes sealed by their sides.... And at other times she saw nothing but doors and windows. As if she had been paid to keep a catalogue of these things, she counted and classified the fanlights of Lincoln's Inn and the Bloomsbury Squares, the high-railinged balconies of the tenements behind Victoria Street and Shaftesbury Avenue, the numbers on Soho doors, the window-boxes of Mayfair. Then there would take her the fancy that everybody she saw knew everybody else, as the bees of a hive may be supposed to know one another, and that she alone was an intruder and unknown. And for a time she rather liked that. It gave her a sense of specialness. But presently it began to frighten her a little. The specialness turned to an intolerable loneliness. Her elbows touched theirs, but they were remoter from her than the stars. If she could have stopped one of them and asked it what name it bore it would have been rather a relief; to k

bed, where she had sat that morning when she had come to tell Cosimo that she was moving into Cheyne Walk at once. Cosimo's studio was on the ground floor, at the back of a block. Amory had not lighted the gas. Somewhere away across a yard somebody was going to bed

o long away. It hardly rose to her conception of their past beautiful friendship. Of course his uncle was dead, but his uncle would still be dead if Cosimo stayed away another couple of months, making four in all, and Amory still waiting and waiting.... Well, he mustn't think that

that she had been-she hardly knew how to put it-say a little disappointed in Cosimo about that. Hitherto she had not asked herself the reason of this, but she thought she saw it now. Cosimo, for once, had not done the proper thing at all. The proper way to fool those inquisitive, stupid people to the top of their bent would have been to give her a real kiss, not a mock one. As likely as n

onical point to this obsession of bodily contacts that seemed to engage the world. Simply, they had been kissing everywhere, and Cosimo certainly ought to have been there to exchange with her humorous Olympian comments on the screaming absurdity of it all. Perhaps-Amory was not sure-but perhaps, merely as part of the general joke-as a sort of recognition of their surroundings-a sort of politeness (if you cared to

not been a fo

skirts and almost made a run for it. To the turning heads of women in the streets, who apparently found something amusing in her demonstratively serviceable Portia hat and her obviously sensible square-toed, flat-heeled shoes, she had long been accustomed; but such alarms as she had felt when Mr. Jowett had turned up his moustache to show the growth

was there. Then they would have ta

o had not removed the linen cases from his pillows; the striped ticking tickled her cheek. But she was too tired to move. Some time ago a clock had struck a quarter-pas

d her alarm, and that, a moment later, she was sitting up with a fluttering heart on Cosimo's bed. She would have called out, but su

fumbling soft

as possible, and burglars also were possible. Instantaneously it had flashed into her mind that the latch was an ordinary one and that it had closed of itself behind her-she remembered to have h

eard to depart again. As the sound of steps

there was nothing for her to

dared not

s washstand, his little bureau, and his row of boots crept into dim shape out of the shadows. The sheet over his arm-chair ceased to be a grey cr

t to see whether any

t think who saw her coming out into the street at that hour of the morning. She groped for the latch of

the sullen day-break over the river, when from behind the curtain that enscreened her bed there came a creak and a heavy sigh.

e room and flung

ment Cosimo op

" he g

sat slug

Wherever have you

in here?" Amory dem

y could get in. But where on earth have you been all night? I came for my key, and then went to my place to see if you were t

tendrils. He had had it cut quite short. But Amory did not comment upon the change. She had come to a sudden resolution. She did not intend to tell Cosimo that she had spent the night ly

cts. I've found one-a ripper-Covent

n there all night, my dear

hy not?... Do be an angel

stole a covert look at his cut hair again. It seemed to her to b